Literature and Legal Cases

During the summer of 2015, I had taken on my first legal internship! While other students were decompressing from the Fall and Spring semesters, I decided it was a good idea to NOT give myself a single solitary break.

For my internship, I worked under the former supreme court justice of New York state, Judge Joseph Gerace. He specialized in tax and real estate cases,  needless to say a challenging and sometimes dry area of law. Continue reading “Literature and Legal Cases”

How Literature Has Shaped History

History and literature have always been greatly distinguished both in high school and in college courses. History courses tend to rely on rote memorization of major events with a grasp of specific concepts and chronology. Whereas literature courses I’ve taken have always relied on being able to read into and decipher allegory, themes, foreshadowing, and other literary elements.

Continue reading “How Literature Has Shaped History”

Interdisciplinarity and the Ever-Changing Hierarchy

Often times I’ve caught myself acting self-conscious about the fact that I’m an English major. Usually when I tell people this fact, it’s greeted with skepticism:

“Oh… what are you going to do with an English Literature degree?”

“Are you going to be a teacher?”

I usually follow up these criticisms with the reassurance that “Well, I’m pre-law so I plan on going to law school afterwards”, as if to validate that my studies are going to be “worth it”. In class discussion, it was nice hearing that I’m not the only one who has experienced this. It’s also interesting that there has somewhat always existed an ever-changing hierarchy in interdisciplinarity as far back as Aristotle, with slight discrepancies from today’s educational hierarchy. Continue reading “Interdisciplinarity and the Ever-Changing Hierarchy”

Our Ownership of Space and Spaces

In Chapter 5 of Interdisciplinarity, Moran discusses how space is not a “neutral category but something that is culturally produced” (149).  Here, Moran seems to assert that space and spaces are not readily existing unless we make them exist through culture.  Given, what we know presently as countries are indeed the spaces in which certain, specific cultures function.  But if territories and spaces are divided due to cultural differences, then why keep these divisions at all if culture is ever-changing?  Permanence of a territory can never be promised.  This must be the reason that country borders are so plastic; they reflect the cultures held “within” them.  Additionally, what does space – or what other species understand as what us humans call space – mean to other species?  There is no telling whether culture defines their spaces, or if they define spaces at all.  Unfortunately, us humans have assumed ownership of our surroundings regardless of the viewpoints of other species. Continue reading “Our Ownership of Space and Spaces”

The Importance and Rationality of Impatience In the Case of Feminism

As many of us may know, feminism has been the subject of debate and scrutiny for as long as we can remember in our immediate lives.  From job inequality to societal values, women have never really seemed to get what they want or even what they deserve.  Part of this, it seems, is the misconception that the force that feminists bring to their requests and demands is a statement of vengeance or a superiority complex.  In Interdisciplinarity, Moran says that feminism “has been founded on an impatience with the power arrangements…and the way that the experience of women is devalued or excluded” (Moran 92).   Continue reading “The Importance and Rationality of Impatience In the Case of Feminism”

An Investigation of High Culture

Joe Moran states in Interdisciplinarity that cultural studies dismiss high culture as elitist (Moran 68).  By this he means that high culture is viewed as snobbish and self-absorbed, that the members of high culture hold themselves in a higher regard.  Briefly investigating the traits and habits of a member of high culture, one may agree with this assertion; high culture – the arts – tends to have a habit of expression.   Continue reading “An Investigation of High Culture”

The Importance of the Reapers of Jean Toomer’s “Cane”

When the word “reaper” comes to mind, I often envision death, the grim reaper, and other deathly symbols.  After all, the rat in “Reapers” is described as injured, bringing a morbid image into the poem; one may assume that its injury is the product of a grim reaper, a bringer of death.  However, “reaper” as a general term can also refer to the agricultural practice of reaping and harvesting.  It does not necessarily mean that the reaper has evil intentions, though we often envision it that way.  The reapers carry an importance with them that defies our interpretation of the first time they were mentioned.  In fact, it could be argued that the reapers are key characters within “Cane”, though it may not be immediately obvious.

In Arc One, we read “Reapers” as a narration, albeit one from a neutral point of view.  Here, neutral means that the narrator recounts the event without opinion; the poem is told how the story unfolds.  Furthermore, one can only assume who is narrating the poem, as the narrator is not given an identity.  In Arc Two, the poem “Harvest Song” is essentially a different take on the “Reapers” poem, because this time it is told from a perspective – the perspective of an individual collecting and harvesting crops.  It is sensible to question if this individual is indeed one of the reapers mentioned in Arc 1; although “Harvest Song” is less broad in the situation it represents, it could connect to what “Reapers” explained to us, just on a much smaller scale.  Therefore, it can be interpreted as a recurring theme that is bound to the plot, represented in multiple ways.

The rat in “Reapers” suffers from a wound that the reapers have given it; one would assume that the reapers are evil.  However, “Harvest Song” shows that the reapers suffer as well, and that there is something above them – the work of the field – that causes them to suffer.  The hunger and filth that the reaper complains of can be seen as a sign of mortality and humanity; the grim reaper we may have thought of upon first read is a figure disconnected from what we commonly associate with “human”.  Does the grim reaper, the angel of death, suffer?  Does it hunger?  We cannot be certain.  But we can be certain that a reaper, a human reaper, suffers just as humans do; we are the same species.  In this way, as both rat and reaper suffer, in the cycle of life they are equal.  Neither is more evil than the other.  In the end, death always wins.

In this way, the reapers of Arc One and Arc Two are key characters because they embody recurring themes in “Cane”; hard work, humanity, and suffering, among others.  They are the humanization of these themes.  The reapers are compactions of forces much larger than themselves, as they manifest themselves in different ways throughout the book.  These manifestations are what make the reapers one of the foundations of “Cane”.

Music as a Discipline

Upon reading the introduction to “Interdisciplinarity” by Joe Moran, I became confused as to why music as a discipline was grouped into the medieval curriculum of Quadrivium.  After all, the Quadrivium also included arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy.  The other curriculum, Trivium, included logic, grammar and rhetoric.  It struck me as odd that music should be grouped in a curriculum with disciplines that it is not presently associated with.  I felt that music would be more appropriately organized as a discipline within Trivium.

Math and science are disciplines that are formulaic in nature; an individual follows a concrete procedure until they come to a concrete answer. Variables are juggled and conclusions are drawn from the organization and relationship of these variables; subtracting two numbers diminishes a resulting number in an amount relative to those two numbers. Now, in response to this, those of you with knowledge of music theory may quickly question the difference between the natures of math/science and music. You may say that scales are based off of a system of numbers, degrees of sound that differ in relation to the pitch of a root note. You may further state that the particular scale degrees within a given scale are just another kind of formula. This is all very true. A series of notes is organized into a concrete system; this system is then referred to as a scale. But the scale as we know it is a very westernized approach to organization of pitch.  In fact, other forms of music, such as Middle-Eastern music, do not use scales at all.

I recently acquired an instrument called a Saz from a Turkish family that lived down the street from me, for they had bought a house and were having an estate sale.  I found that this instrument – vaguely reminiscent of a guitar, but not closely related by any means – was played very differently from most stringed instruments used in America or Europe.  It had a body and a neck, like most stringed instruments, but instead of standard frets (markers that change the pitch of a note played), there were thin, movable frets in the neck that were placed in intervals that had no order.  After a bit of research, I found that the Saz and many other Middle-Eastern instruments did not utilize scales; they played notes in between notes.  I quickly realized that Middle-Eastern musicians played by feel, not by formula.  They played by instinct, even by improvisation.  Where perfection is the norm in the Western world, the Eastern musicians played their music devoid of any concrete system.  Therefore, certain styles of music seem to fall out of the scope of Quadrivium.

Now that music has been somewhat distinguished from Quadrivium, how could it fit into Trivium?  Well, Trivium – logic, grammar, and rhetoric – consists of disciplines that are essentially based on conveying ideas, often artistically.  Rhetoric in particular is the art of persuasion, which ties in perfectly with music.  Every love song ever written was written with the intention of persuading a significant other to love the writer.  Every empowering punk song ever written was written with the intention of persuading the subject of the song that that representative group was not to be reckoned with.  Depending on the subject of the song, the list goes on and on.  Additionally, music, in and of itself, is an art.  So doesn’t it make more sense that  it should be treated like art, not like a science?

Page Poetry

The idea behind page poetry is simple; choose a block of text and alter it to possess different meanings. It is a way to analyse text through New Criticism which is both creative and challenging.

For example:
The Sea
(This image came from an online post )

However simple the idea sounds, in practice it is much more difficult. The poet must not only have an idea in mind for the poem, but also must shape the chosen text into the parameters of the poetry.
I created an example below (please excuse my artistic skills):

This is a section of text used is from the very beginning of the Alice in Wonderland novel by Lewis Carroll.  I modified the text to create this poem.
section of text used is from the very beginning of the Alice in Wonderland novel by Lewis Carroll.
I modified the text to create this poem.

The method I used to create this poem is as follows:
1- I located a block of text *
2- I discovered the main quality within the text which I wished to amplify (in this case, the disjointed aspect of dreams)
3- In pencil, I circled the words and phrases I wished to include in the poem
4- I numbered the order in which I wanted to connect the words and phrases to create the poem
5- I wrote the poem out on another piece of paper to make sure it ‘made sense’ or was formated to my language liking:
……….Tired
………..she peeped into
nothing
…mind
……….very sleepy
when she wondered
…….it flashed across her mind
………………………..burning with time
…………………another moment down
……..considering
……………………………….she fell
……………plenty of time
………..but
…..noticed
disappointment
………………………….she
………………….shall think nothing of tumbling
….Let me see:
………………..knowledge
words

6- I titled the poem “Alice Dreams”
7- Used oil pastels to block out the text I did not want to include
8- I created a visual guide to the order in which I wished the eyes of the reader to follow the words/phrases that I did not block out

You do not have to be an artistic genius to create poetry in this fashion. The steps can be easily followed on the computer screen:

Created using Microsoft Word
Created using Microsoft Word

Finally, I would like to point out the differences when I add punctuation and spacing to the poem to visualize it as a separate entity:

Alice Dreams

Tired,
She peeped into nothing.
Mind…very sleepy…
When she wondered
(it flashed across her mind)
burning with time,
another moment down,
considering, she fell…
Plenty of time,
but noticed disappointment.
She shall think nothing of tumbling…
Let me see:
Knowledge…words.

As an artistic person who also loves reading and writing, I was fascinated by page poetry. There is really not all that much to find about it online.

*the text used can either be written by you (be an original work) or be something pulled from a pre-existing text.

On Seamus Heaney’s Death

A number of people in the department and on campus have written to me about Seamus Heaney’s death, so I just want to share a couple thoughts about him.

Yeats once said that a poet is never the bundle of accident and incoherence that sits down to breakfast; he has been reborn as an idea, something intended, complete, so I guess it’s fitting that the last time I saw Heaney, in Ireland a little over three weeks ago, he was having breakfast. He had just given a reading the previous night (I’m guessing it was his last public reading), and that morning, as I was having my own breakfast while stealing glances his way, I thought of that quote. For Yeats, of course, the whole idea of The Poet means a kind of paradoxical blending of individuality and collectivity — by adhering scrupulously to his or her own vision the poet gives expression to (and is reborn as a part of) something communal, more type than man, more passion than type. It’s all pretty typical high modernist stuff, and in certain moods, I agree; but when I saw Heaney that morning and thought about his reading the previous evening, I felt like Yeats only gets it partly right.

Theres an old Irish expression that (old) people use when they don’t know a person referenced in a conversation. They’ll ask, who is he when he’s at home? During Heaney’s reading, he didn’t go with all the really famous stuff  — “Digging,” the poems about bog people, the major translations, his beautiful and conflicted responses to Northern Irish violence — but, instead, gave us short, simple, vivid lyrics, most of them about rural life in Ireland. It struck me during the reading and again at breakfast that if being a Poet means, for Yeats, a kind of rebirth, a kind of transcendence, being a poet (with the small p) can also be a way of becoming more fully who one is when one is at home — that bundle of accident, in all our silly humanity, at the breakfast table.

When Heaney was introduced at the reading by the president of the Yeats Summer School, she said that Heaney decided once again to give a reading, even though he has not been in the best of health, because he said he owed it to Yeats. That sounds pretty audacious -— though, if anyone has earned that right, it’s Heaney — but during the course of the reading it became clear to me that the choice of simple lyrics, as opposed to the biggies, was really an act of humble tribute, a return to poetry as something beautifully ordinary.

All of which is an elaborate way of saying that Heaney, for all his fame, was a thoroughly humble person. Over the years, I’ve seen him interact with lots of fans, including many Geneseo students eager to have their books signed and to ask questions about their own encounters with his poems, and he was always, just that — humble, kind, open, ready to talk.

The first time I met him, in 1995 at a hotel bar in Sligo, I was one of those eager students. A group of us, all in graduate school, had pretty much cornered him, testing out our ideas for seminar papers and doctoral theses, and, while I don’t remember what he said (I was too self-conscious about meeting the great poet to actually listen to him), I remember his manner —  friendly, interested, obviously content to sit around and talk poetry, even with (what must have been an unbearable) gaggle of graduate students.

Okay, I’m starting to use alliteration and odd metaphors (gaggle?) in my phrasing — time to wrap this up. When Heaney read, when he talked in bars, when he sat at breakfast smiling shyly to passersby, he always seemed, to me at least, to be at home as himself, at home as both poet and person, person and poet.

Heres one of the poems from that last public reading. Its a nice one for summer’s end:

Blackberry-Picking

Late August, given heavy rain and sun
For a full week, the blackberries would ripen.
At first, just one, a glossy purple clot
Among others, red, green, hard as a knot.
You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet
Like thickened wine: summer’s blood was in it
Leaving stains upon the tongue and lust for
Picking. Then red ones inked up and that hunger
Sent us out with milk cans, pea tins, jam pots
Where briars scratched and wet grass bleached our boots.
Round hayfields, cornfields and potato drills
We trekked and picked until the cans were full,
Until the tinkling bottom had been covered
With green ones, and on top big dark blobs burned
Like a plate of eyes. Our hands were peppered
With thorn pricks, our palms sticky as Bluebeards.
We hoarded the fresh berries in the byre
But when the bath was filled we found a fur,
A rat-grey fungus, glutting on our cache.
The juice was stinking too. Once off the bush
The fruit fermented, the sweet flesh would turn sour.
I always felt like crying. It wasnt fair
That all the lovely canfuls smelt of rot.
Each year I hoped theyd keep, knew they would not.